QlikView for Beginners - An Introduction to QlikView

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to give you an introduction to QlikView and show to how to setup your first QlikView document so you can see QlikView in action.

You will create your first QlikView document and use some random sales data and show how to create lists and a simple chart within QlikView.

What does QlikView actually do?

With QlikView you can analyze data in sources such as Excel Spreadsheets, Databases, or text files. You can create charts from your data, you can search through your data very quickly, you can explore your data easily which can help you make decisions or many just confirm what you thought.

QlikView is part of a category of software called ‘Business Intelligence’, because of this it is often compared with SSAS.

For example: If you are using data about the orders customers have placed you might want to answer the question ‘Which of my customers placed the largest total order in the last 6 months?’ QlikView makes it easier to answer such questions by allow you the ability to explore the data quickly.

Who produces QlikView?

Below are a few details about QlikTech

QlikView was developed by a Swedish company called QlikTech.

QlikTech was founded in 1993.

QlikTech has over 24,000 customers.

QlikTech has over 1000 Employees.

If you have never heard of QlikView or QlikTech before then hopefully the points above should satisfy you that QlikTech is by no means a small company.

Next we will look at getting the software and installing it on your computer.

QlikView Installation - A Free Download

The examples produced in this article were created using QlikView Personal Edition Version 11(QVPE) which is a free download.This is not a time limited product. QlikView Personal Edition can only open QlikView documents created with that copy of QlikView Personal Edition (QVPE).

If you try to open QlikView documents created by another user you will get the following warning. If you select the option to recover this file you will no longer be able to open documents you created. As shown in the screenshot below :

If you wish to share QlikView documents with other users you need to obtain a license from QlikTech.

Join the most active online SQL Server Community

SQL knowledge, delivered daily, free:

Email address:

You make SSC a better place

As a member of SQLServerCentral, you get free access to loads of fresh content: thousands
of articles and SQL scripts, a library of free eBooks, a weekly database news roundup,
a great Q & A platform… And it’s our huge, buzzing community of SQL Server Professionals
that makes it such a success.